It was a safe bet that Detective Stacy Winters and I wouldn’t be going shopping together anytime soon. After making the cheap joke at my expense, she realized I had contaminated her crime scene and, annoyed, she continued to interrogate me without so much as missing a beat or offering me a tissue or a glass of water.
She was about my height, five foot six, but, unlike me, had no hips or breasts to speak of. Her closely cropped hair was bleached white and stuck out in little spikes all around her face, making her look more like an android or the lead singer in an eighties girl band than a cop in small-town Connecticut. She wore a dark blue suit and a plain white shirt, a sexless version of the outfit I’d been wearing a few hours earlier. Clumpy black mascara was her one concession to femininity and against her pale skin and watery blue eyes it made her look faintly psychotic. She shook some Tic Tacs into her hand and popped them into her mouth, but pointedly didn’t offer me any, even though I could have used one.
“I don’t think it’s suicide,” she said. “What do you think?” She looked me over, and took her time before saying anything else. I searched for the good cop since she was obviously the bad one.
“You’re not Nicky’s usual type,” she said. “He likes-liked-blondes. And generally a little older, more seasoned, he’d say.”
“I don’t know what he liked. I just met him tonight. He helped me into my room.” That elicited muffled laughs from the group until she ordered them to settle down.
Suddenly, I was conscious of standing, in thin pants and a threadbare top, in the cool night air, in a sea of cops and security guards. I struggled to maintain my dignity and cover my chest, which was threatening to reveal just how cold I was. The homeless guy and I were in this together; he must have found the body. In a show of solidarity I made eye contact with him and folded my arms in an attempt to stay warm but also to hide my shaking, both from the cold and from the experience.
“Nick Vigoriti,” Winters recited. “Low-level hood, lucky in love, unlucky in everything else.”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, too polite to spit, but desperately wanting to. “If you knew who he was, why did you need to call me?” I asked. She wasn’t used to being challenged and, not surprisingly, didn’t like it.
“’Cause you were seen with the deceased,” she said, flipping through a small blue notepad, “interviewing him, apparently, a few hours ago.” She looked at me as if she’d caught me in a lie.
“I wasn’t interviewing him. He just happened to sit down next to me. I’m not sure it’s germane to your investigation, but I’m writing an article. On gardening.”
She seemed to find that amusing. And under the circumstances, it did sound pretty lame. “Right. And all those other girls at the bar are writing their theses on the sex lives of the Arapaho Indians.” This drew howls from her captive audience of subordinates, who, I had the feeling, knew they’d better laugh at the boss’s jokes. It only confirmed my earlier notion that the woman and I didn’t have the same sense of humor.
“The article is for the Springfield Bulletin. It’s on the titan arum in the hotel’s lobby.” My illustrious press credentials and the Latin name failed to dazzle her. “The common name is the corpse flower-” my voice trailed off.
“This is the only corpse I’m interested in right now,” she said, pointing to Vigoriti with her pen. She read me the high points, or low points, of Nick’s career from her notepad, but something told me she knew them by heart. Only in his thirties, Nick had been an old-timer at Titans, hanging around the place and running errands since he was fourteen and the hottest action at the hotel was Monday night’s mah-jongg and Thursday’s amateur night.
“In and out of trouble, in and out of beds,” she said, staring at me to see if she’d gotten a reaction, “at least on weekdays when the husbands weren’t around.” She shared Nick’s penchant for stating the obvious.
The way Winters told it made me think she and Nick had some history, but I couldn’t tell if it was business or pleasure. Since she hadn’t asked me a question, I kept silent. It ticked her off.
“So why’d he have your card? Were you two planning to tiptoe through the tulips together?” Another chuckle from the troops.
“Of course not.” I told her about the glass enclosure and how I’d suggested to Nick that I might have a buyer for it.
“Everything’s for sale at Titans,” she muttered. “Where is Bernie, anyway?” she asked, looking around at her crew. “Didn’t I tell someone to drag his sorry butt down here?”
Just then, the loading-dock doors flew open and a big man in a cream-colored suit, with Brillo-pad hair, bleached teeth, and a tan to rival George Hamilton’s, powered toward us, arms out to his sides.
Bernie Mishkin took up a lot of psychic space. A big man to begin with, he seemed intent on expanding his territory with sweeping arm gestures and a cloak of cigar smoke that I suspected was permanent, like that Peanuts character who was always surrounded by dirt.
“What the…” He stared down at Nick’s body and bit his left knuckle. His hands flew to his chest operatically, as if he was having a heart attack. “Nicky, Nicky, Nicky.” He looked around plaintively. “I’m glad Fran isn’t here to see this. She’d be inconsulate. He was like a son to us.” The group didn’t offer much sympathy, neither did I. I stood there wondering if inconsulate was really a word.
“What happened, Stacy, I mean, Detective?”
“Who knows, Bernie? Nick stepped on some toes. Always did. Who knows that better than you? And he had some questionable friends.” She switched from comforting to faintly confrontational in a heartbeat and a look passed between them that suggested she thought Mishkin was one of them.
“Anything you can tell us?” she asked.
Mishkin could have had a career in overblown amateur theatricals. He threw his hands in the air; if he could have torn out little tufts of hair, I think he would have.
“We weren’t close these days.” He sighed, finally clasping his hands. “I’ll admit it. He… we… had words.”
Winters pulled Mishkin away and continued questioning him about three yards from me. With Mishkin’s back to me, I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The homeless guy was leaning on his cart and haltingly giving his statement for the second time since I’d arrived. He sipped a clear liquid from a two-liter bottle, and rearranged his bag collection, tucking in a thin black leather strap. I nearly asked him for a swig of water to clean my mouth before coming to my senses.
More interested in Mishkin now, Winters seemed to have forgotten about me; I was left with Hector, the deceased, and the stinky puddle I’d made. After fifteen minutes, which seemed longer given the stench and the chilly night air, I challenged her again. “Are we finished, Stacy, I mean, Detective? Much as I’d like to help you, I don’t think there’s anything I can add to your investigation since I didn’t know the victim,” I said. I mustered all of my nerve, refolded my arms tightly across my chest, and tried to look tough. Easy in Doc Martens, not so easy in flip-flops.
“Just when we were getting on so well,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Mishkin said, as if noticing me for the first time. “Have we met? Were you a friend of Nicky’s?”
“She was seen with the victim a few hours ago,” Winters said.
Mishkin stepped toward me and stared, trying to recall if he’d seen me before.
Winters gave me her card and lapsed into cop speak, telling me to call her if I remembered anything else that might have a bearing on the case. Fat chance I’d get in touch with her again of my own free will. As soon as Lucy checked in, we were checking out.
A news van arrived and Winters motioned for Hector to get me out of there; I was more than happy to leave. I followed his squat body and knocked knees, retracing our steps back to the loading-dock doors; then I remembered about the greenhouse.
“Mr. Mishkin,” I said, turning, “could I possibly have fifteen minutes of your time tomorrow?”
Mishkin looked at me, then Winters, bewildered and almost nervous. “Sure,” he said, “call my assistant, Rachel, to set up a time.” He seemed to be waiting for an explanation. I let him stew for a few seconds.
“It’s about the corpse flower.”